What can Clarity show when someone gets stuck?

A session recording reconstructs a visit from page information and actions such as clicks and scrolls. Use it to see the state of a form or button and try the same steps yourself.

If a visitor presses Save several times, the replay might show that a message appeared below the part of the page they could see. A heatmap combines clicks or scrolling across measured visits. Use it to see whether similar behavior is worth investigating.

A missing detail can come from the capture itself. For example, Clarity cannot reconstruct what happened inside a third-party checkout frame. A heatmap can miss details in moving parts of the layout. Use your own test and the app’s saved result to check what happened.

How can you check a replay without collecting customer data?

Install Clarity only on the disposable pages you need. Start with one page, one fake form and one deliberate click.

Set up an empty project
Confirm that the test page and Clarity project have no real customers or private data. Add its tracking code through an integration or in the site code. Configure masking and how the page handles a declined measurement choice before generating test visits.
Try the same page with two choices
In a fresh browser, try an allowed visit with a made-up private marker in a form input and on the page itself. Find the visit and verify the marker is absent from the capture and playback. In another fresh session, decline and verify what gets sent, stored and replayed.
Check a specific visible result
Perform one click that changes the page and one that does nothing. Find the test recording using the page and time. Confirm it shows enough of the screen to explain the difference. Reproduce the behavior directly before changing the form.

What should you leave out of Clarity?

Leave the tracker off pages that show information you do not need to collect. On pages you do track, use masking, which hides selected information before sending it, and check the actual capture with fake data.

Clarity documents input-box and dropdown masking in all modes. The page can still show the same information outside the input, such as in a confirmation message, and page addresses or your own labels can carry private details. Changes to masking can take up to an hour to apply and do not change old recordings.

By default, a browser or device can be counted separately. Clarity offers optional custom identifiers that can connect visits. Keep them off unless a specific question needs them, and avoid putting personal details in friendly labels or tags. Microsoft says deleting one person’s data requires deleting the entire Clarity project.

Microsoft documents consent signal enforcement in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland. Depending on setup, a declined choice can leave limited cookieless measurements and split a visit across pages. If your intended behavior is to collect nothing when declined, block the tracker itself and verify that behavior. Microsoft also says Clarity should not be used for sites or apps targeting people under 18.

What limits apply if Clarity is free?

Microsoft offers the hosted service without a subscription fee. It documents a limit of up to 100,000 recorded sessions per project per day. You might not find a recording for every visit.

Compare the group that was actually measured. A desktop heatmap and a mobile replay may cover different people and page layouts. If a recording is absent, check whether the page ran the tracker and whether the collection choice allowed the activity.

Clarity history at a glance
What you are looking for	Documented scope
Ordinary playback	30 days. Microsoft documents selected samples and favorited or labeled sessions that can remain for up to nine months.
Heatmaps	Up to nine months of heatmap data and up to 100,000 page views per heatmap.

Can you take the recordings with you?

The recording download is a CSV spreadsheet of summaries and playback links. The links still depend on Clarity’s stored recordings. Keep your own permitted notes about what you found and the changes you made.

An administrator can create an access token for the dashboard export. It returns recent dashboard totals for one to three days. Microsoft documents a limit of 10 requests per project per day and up to 1,000 rows per response.

Check what the replacement needs before disabling Clarity. A spreadsheet can preserve a date, route and observation. It cannot preserve the ability to play back the visit when the linked recording expires.